In the middle of July, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on homelessness in America. Many Americans have expressed frustration with the order, but now some individuals are living in fear.
On July 24, Trump signed an executive order to take homeless people off the streets because of the idea of crime and disorder. The order states that people without a house are mentally challenged or addicted to drugs, and the government has failed programs to address the issue. So to get the houseless people off the streets, they will use civil commitment to restore public order.
This policy is affecting Holden Mitchell Rester, a student at Delgado Community College who is going through homelessness. Rester is dealing with being homeless, independent, and a student, and with this policy, he can be aggressively taken off the street and forced to have a psychiatric evaluation.
“Trump’s new federal homelessness policy makes people like me invisible or criminalized. It focuses on clearing encampments and punishing unhoused people rather than creating long-term solutions like education-based housing. My situation shows how damaging this approach is. I’m not part of an encampment, I sleep on a park bench in City Park, under the radar. I’m not disruptive or unsafe, yet under Trump’s plan, people like me could be pushed further into danger instead of being supported with stable housing or opportunities to rebuild,” Rester said.
Rester was discharged from Covenant House New Orleans in July, right at the start of the order being implemented.
Rester’s living conditions are not the best, but he gets by staying unnoticed.
“Unlike many, people don’t always recognize I’m unhoused because I’m young and carry myself with dignity. Some assume I “get away with it” because of privilege, but the reality is I’ve simply learned how to stay under the radar,” Rester said.
However, he persevered through it all with his legal activism by filing a lawsuit against Covenant House for unexpectedly discharging him. He also filed a lawsuit against the United States Justice Department to expose corruption and hold institutions accountable, to rewrite the future. He is interested in journalism and is going to Full Sail University to study media communication.
“I’m building a life’s work that blends investigative journalism, public interest law, spiritual strategy, and trauma-informed movement building. I’ve survived foster care, institutional betrayal, homelessness, and chronic illness (recently confirmed with inflammatory bowel disease and sclerosing mesenteritis). Instead of breaking me, it sharpened me,” Rester said.
Rester expresses what inspired him to go into journalism and how he wants to be a sovereignty architect to bring truth and justice to the system we live in here in America.
